Drum Machine suggestions?

GarageBand is full featured DAW, has lots of different drum options, and is free on iOS and iPadOS. But for me, it was too complex…I just want to quickly find a beat for practice or jamming.

These apps are not free, but worth the money, IMO.

For playing songs, I like Drumbeats+. User interface is kind of clunky, but you can save your favourites under a song name at the correct BPM. (Note they try to sell you a monthly subscription when you install it…you don’t need this…it comes with lots of good beats for the app price)

Comes with lots of nice sounding drum grooves in a variety of genres, and some good training grooves as well.

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/drum-beats-rhythm-machine/id461218759

For technical practice, I find Pro Metronome the best. I don’t like the standard click-click or beep-beep sounds most metronome apps use, but this one also includes some real drum samples, which I find much more motivating when bringing things up to tempo, nailing the timing on a tricky passage, etc.

It’s also really easy to add hi-hat sounds on the 8ths and 16ths, which is super helpful sometimes.

https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/pro-metronome-tempo-beat-subdivision-polyrhythm/id477960671

2 Likes